EVENTS

More strident shrill atheism

A high school in Iowa got a Christian rock band to come to the school to tell the students some good stuff, but it didn’t work out as well as the school expected. (Secularism? What secularism? We don’t do no stinkin’ secularism round here.)

Everyone anticipated the message from Junkyard Prophet, a traveling band based in Minnesota, to be about bullying and making good choices. Instead, junior and senior high students at Dunkerton High School and faculty members said they were assaulted by the group’s extreme opinions on homosexuality and images of aborted fetuses.

“They told my daughter, the girls, that they were going to have mud on their wedding dresses if they weren’t virgins,” said Jennifer Littlefield, a parent upset with the band’s performance.

Well, you see, this is one reason some people think secularism is the way to go when it comes to education; it’s so that god-bothering lunatics won’t be telling students vicious bullshit of that kind.

…the group apparently changed and misrepresented its total message going into Thursday’s appearance.

After performing, the group separated boys, girls and teachers in the building.

During the breakout session, the young men learned the group’s thoughts on the U.S. Constitution and what one Prophet referred to as its “10 commandments.” The leader also showed images of musicians who died because of drug overdoses, including Elvis Presley.

Members of the group blasted other performers, like Toby Keith, for their improper influence.

The girls, meanwhile, were told to save themselves for their husbands and assume a submissive role in the household. According to witnesses, the leader in that effort also forced the young ladies to chant a manta of sorts about remaining pure.

Those who walked out or attempted to confront the speakers were shouted down or ridiculed as disrespectful, according to students.

Comments

“After performing, the group separated boys, girls and teachers in the building.”
How did they do that? I am a teacher (12-16 years old pupils) and no way any group could have achieved that on my school.

“Everyone anticipated the message from Junkyard Prophet, a traveling band based in Minnesota, to be about bullying and making good choices. Instead, junior and senior high students at Dunkerton High School and faculty members said they were assaulted by the group’s extreme opinions on homosexuality and images of aborted fetuses.”

Well, see, they did talk about bullying and making good choices… it all depends on your perspective. 😉

They think homosexual people should be bullied.
And they think ‘making good choices’ entails women choosing to never have extramarital sex, never have an abortion, etc.

I think anytime christians try something on like this, we should get in touch with news media in a different state and tell the story — but alter the details just a little, to make out that it was a muslim group carrying out the indoctrination. Pull a bit of a bait-and-switch, if you will. Make them realise that what is unacceptable for one group of people to carry out, is equally unacceptable for any other group of people to carry out.

I stopped distinguishing between christians and muslims a long time ago, anyway.

Iowa person here. They actually came back and addressed the uproar (at a fire and brimstone church, of course so it was a stacked house). I can’t believe the principal or superintendent didn’t know what they were all about. A) Look at their freakin’ name for Pete’s sake! and B) Look at their freakin’ website!!

A quote from the Superintendent: “I checked them out once, twice, three times before I was going to invite them into our school,” Stanton said.

It would have taken less than half an hour of Google to find out about them. FYI, that ministry (the infamous Bradlee Dean’s You Can Run But You Cannot Hide) is now a certified hate group. Although that designation wasn’t public when this happened, they have been involved in plenty of scandals, and have been criticized by other schools for doing the same

“The girls, meanwhile, were told to save themselves for their husbands and assume a submissive role in the household. According to witnesses, the leader in that effort also forced the young ladies to chant a manta of sorts about remaining pure.”

And here in Canada, the “Taliban” is Catholic: our reputation for being a haven for liberal progressives is besmirched by the recent actions of the administration of a publicly-funded “Catholic” university (in Ottawa). The Student Union has been instructed to cease and desist from distributing condoms on campus, as this contravenes the statutes of the university.

“We never said that it was not a good idea to use condoms, it’s only because we’re talking about Saint Paul,” said Danielle Tessier, the school’s vice-rector.

When I read this the first time, I didn’t realize that the band was that of the double-ultra repugnant Bradlee Dean.
I find it really hard to believe that the school administration was ignorant of his ways. Cripes, I’m Canadian and I know how foul he is (though addmittedly due to the attention he attracts in atheist circles).
A google search on bradlee dean controversy brings up over a quarter of a MILLION hits, starting with one on his performance in the Minnesota legislature, in which, just below the headline is “A controversial pastor delivered a prayer that left House members – of both parties – shocked and incensed.”

@evil doug
But you have loaded your google query with the word controversy
What we need is the bradlee dean to return the top results with titles like bigot sued controversial illegal etc. and some judicious wikipedia editing
It might not be a bad idea to publish some good SEO pra ctices for non believers to follow in their blog/articles to achieve this goal

What I don’t undstand is why, as soon as the bands motives became obvious, the teachers didn’t step in and tell them to get lost? Or did they agree with the message?
If I was a parent I would be furious.

Many teachers would be delighted to cede power to an outside authority that the kids might be too polite and/or embarrassed to challenge. Few teachers have the goal of promoting independence of thought in their students, much less to try to teach when and how it is appropriate to challenge authority.

Deepak,
I have no idea of the details of how things float to the top of the Google hit list, but it does seem possible that if the same phrase were used by many bloggers et al, that phrase would work its way up. I wonder if even repeated use of the phrase in comments would work to that effect. They say that cream rises to the top. Well, yes, but so does scum.